Fine dining is, among other things, an exercise in letting go of control. The restaurant decides what you eat, when you eat it, and how long you remain in your chair. In return, you trust that the considerable amount of time and money you have handed over are well deserved.
In your opinion, what sets fine dining apart?
Flynn McGarry: In any industry, you need a space to explore its furthest reaches. Beyond its status, I believe a fine dining restaurant offers more room to explore what is possible in cuisine.
Dominique Crenn: Fine dining begins long before the restaurant. It begins in the soil and the water, with the farmer, the fisherman, the artisan, and knowledge passed quietly from one generation to another. The restaurant is where all of these stories meet.
I don’t define fine dining by white tablecloths, expensive ingredients, or the number of courses. I define it by intention. How deeply do you care? How do you honor what nature has given you, the people who brought it to you, and the guest who has chosen to give you something incredibly precious: their time? Technique, beauty, and excellence matter, but they are tools. A great restaurant should leave something with you. You may not remember every ingredient, but you should remember how you felt.
E.J. Lagasse: Fine dining is experiential. Typically, it’s a longer dinner, so you’re interacting more with the guests at your table. The restaurant also gets to guide you through its story, whether that’s through the food, the service, or what have you.
Luxury is central to fine dining, but the character of luxury itself is constantly changing. What do you think it means to the next generation of diners?
Lagasse: I think the next generation is looking back at the great fine dining institutions. Emeril’s is in New Orleans, where restaurants have been operating for 100 or 125 years. It’s about looking at what they were doing then that was considered cutting-edge and figuring out how we can put our own spin on it today.
I also think diners want the freedom to explore a menu on their own terms. Maybe they don’t want to eat so late or dine for four and a half hours. Some guests want to sit back, partake in the full experience, and really make a meal out of it. Then you might have a group of Gen Z guests who say, “Hey, look, we want to do something after this. We want to roll.” They want the luxury of choice: to experience it fully or in a more abbreviated way so they can get to the next thing.
McGarry: Luxury is currently, and unfortunately, focused almost exclusively on access and hype. My hope is that, as the next generation of diners refines its taste, luxury can be defined by individuality, ingredient quality, and the quality of life a luxury restaurant should be able to offer its team.
Matthew Kammerer: Corporations have created a cookie-cutter industry, and the focus on the bottom line has taken a bite out of hospitality. The highest-quality products aren’t necessarily the most expensive. There are plenty of expensive ingredients you can buy on the Internet. Our lives are full of easy access and expensive things. The question is how to create something singular, rare, and honest, with integrity. That comes through smaller-scale experiences rooted in exceptional service and privacy.
Crenn: For a long time, luxury was defined by rarity, abundance, and access. The more difficult something was to obtain, the more luxurious we believed it to be. I think that definition is changing, and it needs to. Today, luxury is knowledge. It is knowing who grew something and how, and understanding the season, soil, water, and hands behind what you are eating. A beautiful potato grown with care can be as luxurious to me as caviar.
Then there is time, which may be the greatest luxury we have now: to sit for a few hours, taste, listen, and look at another person without being somewhere else at the same time. We have access to almost everything, yet we are hungry for presence. The next generation isn’t only asking, “Is this beautiful? Is this rare?” They are asking, “What does this mean?”
Charlie Mitchell: I think luxury will be rooted in how you make someone feel. People want help feeling good about themselves.
Every generation rejects something about the generation before it. What, if anything, do you think Gen Z is rejecting about traditional fine dining?
Kammerer: Alcohol. The work grind.
Crenn: I think they are rejecting performance without meaning. They don’t want ceremony simply because someone decided 100 years ago that this is how luxury should behave. They question hierarchy, excess, where ingredients come from, how people are treated, and what our choices are doing to the planet. Good. Question us.
I came from kitchens where you didn’t always ask why; you did what you were told. Sometimes fear was mistaken for discipline and suffering for excellence. I don’t believe in that. Excellence comes from attention, curiosity, discipline, and care. Tradition is important because it carries knowledge, but it should never become an excuse to stop thinking. Keep what has truth. Let go of what no longer serves us.
McGarry: This generation has such a short attention span that a longer, more focused meal isn’t interesting. I also think fewer diners are going to restaurants to learn something about food or wine and more are going to feel validated. The goal of dining has shifted.
Lagasse: From the diner’s perspective, I don’t know, to be honest with you. While there is some desire not to partake in a long tasting menu, I still think a great number of people are excited about it. They want to go out, listen to a chef’s story, and experience the products as they’re intended to be.
I think it’s less about leaving things behind and more about embracing fine dining and making it their own. That allows chefs, and myself, being on the younger side, to have much more interaction with them as people.
Mitchell: I don’t think they are rejecting it at all. The value of real-life experiences is still high.
Many younger diners arrive having already encountered your dishes online. Has the camera become another guest at the table, and how has that changed the relationship between chef and guest?
McGarry: Yes. I think it creates less openness and trust in the restaurant. We have many people who show us a photograph of a dish they saw online, even if it has been out of season for months. Not having it affects their expectations of the restaurant. At the same time, social media has helped restaurants share their perspectives in different ways. For a fine dining restaurant especially, it has allowed the ethos of the food to expand beyond its four walls.
Lagasse: It’s definitely “camera eats first.” One of the funnier moments is when a guest is excited to get into the meal. The salmon cheesecake with caviar arrives, and they’re like, “Oh wow, okay, I get to eat this now.” They pick up the fork, and then it’s, “Oh, wait.” They grab their phone and stop to take a quick picture.
I’m a big food photography person when I’m eating out. I take a lot of pictures because I want the memory for myself: what the dish looked like, what it was, and the people I was with. Maybe some people think their picture will go viral, but I think the majority are doing it because they’re enjoying themselves and want to share the experience.
The access can be incredible. As a chef living in New Orleans, I can see what a chef in Singapore is doing thanks to social media and the diners posting from those restaurants. Everyone has a camera, and everyone has become a food critic in their own way. That means we have to maintain the same standard across the dining room, not just for a traditional critic or a perceived VIP.
Kammerer: Our dining room is reasonably unflattering for photography. Most restaurants use focused, cool lighting on the table to highlight the food. We use warm lighting that is drawn back. The focus is on the view outside, the old-growth redwood walls and ceiling, the fireplace in winter, and the pottery and flowers throughout the room.
We want guests to be present and engaged with the environment. Sitting there for three hours as the sun sets over the ocean, the fog rolls through, and a rainstorm approaches is the truest form of luxury we can offer. I prefer that guests give up on taking photographs early in the meal and engage with the experience.
Crenn: The camera is absolutely another guest. Sometimes it gets the first bite. I understand the desire to photograph something beautiful. Social media has created extraordinary possibilities for exchange and discovery. But there is a difference between remembering a moment and spending the moment trying to prove that it happened.
Food is alive. A sauce moves. An aroma rises and disappears. Temperature changes. Someone has spent hours preparing something for the precise moment it reaches you, and then it is gone. There is beauty in that impermanence. Take the photograph if it means something to you. Then put the phone down. Taste. Look at the person across from you. Some experiences don’t need an audience. Maybe that, too, is becoming a form of luxury.
As a chef, do you think it’s your responsibility to evolve with the tastes of a new generation of diners, or to remain steadfast in your own point of view? Where do you draw the line between evolution and compromise?
Crenn: I have been cooking for almost 40 years. Of course I have changed. Life changes you. The woman cooking today is not the woman who opened Atelier Crenn. I have become a mother. I have loved and lost. I have experienced illness, watched the climate change, listened to younger generations, and questioned things I once believed. Why would my cooking remain the same?
Evolution is essential, but evolution is not chasing relevance. I don’t want to cook according to an algorithm or put something on a plate because it is trending. I want to remain curious enough to question myself and grounded enough to know why I am making a decision. I listen to my team. I listen to farmers, scientists, artists, young cooks, and nature. Then I respond in my own language. For me, that is evolution. Compromise begins when fear replaces curiosity.
McGarry: As a chef, it is less about evolving with the tastes of a new generation of diners. As a restaurateur, it is very important. Balancing the two is my whole job. For me, it becomes compromise when something makes me feel as though I’m no longer in my own restaurant.
Kammerer: There is zero compromise. I never wanted a vanilla restaurant. We want to challenge you through taste, texture, flavor, and technique. If you walk away loving all 12 courses, we haven’t done our job. You should experience something new and leave with a memory of something you had never encountered before, even if it leaves you saying, “I’m not sure about that.”
You may receive a very simple, transparent sashimi course followed by a dish seasoned with abalone guts. Guts! How scary, until you try them. If we call them “offal” rather than “stomach” or “guts,” some of that fear subsides and guests become less intimidated. Obviously, we want you to enjoy yourself, and there has to be a balance. But chefs shouldn’t run from the unfamiliar.
Lagasse: You always have to adapt to what the guest wants in front of them. But Emeril’s has been here for 36 years, and we rely heavily on classic cooking and fine dining standards, from the dining room and wine service down to the food. At the same time, there’s a line. We serve trout almondine: roasted trout with almonds. I don’t know how much you can progress that dish before it is no longer trout with almonds.
We have a saying that there’s nothing cooler than John F. Kennedy’s Ray-Bans. If we can appeal to the previous generation, the next generation, and the current one, with the same coolness and timelessness as JFK’s Ray-Bans, then we’re doing something right.
Fine dining is becoming more expensive to produce at the same time that it’s becoming harder for younger diners to afford. How do you think that tension is shaping the next generation of restaurants?
Mitchell: We will always find a way to shop, take a vacation, see a Broadway show, etc. Dining experiences should be prioritized as well.
Kammerer: We are definitely seeing fewer guests in their early 20s.
Lagasse: Affordability is something we’re all worried about. But there is so much that goes into a restaurant considered fine dining. You’re talking about 60 staff members, farmers raising things specifically for you, and a tremendous amount of effort behind the scenes. Those costs are very difficult for the business, restaurateur, or chef to alter.
Maybe dining out becomes something people don’t do a couple of nights a week. I definitely feel that people are going out less than they were. It’s becoming harder to be a neighborhood restaurant that relies on the guest who comes Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. It is particularly difficult for the younger generation, but I still think they’re willing to save and put real effort into visiting places they believe will be truly experiential.
Crenn: This may be one of the most important questions facing restaurants now. There is a real cost to doing things properly. If we want farmers to care for the soil and fishermen to protect the ocean, they need to be able to live. If we want cooks and servers to have sustainable lives and families, we need to pay them properly. For too long, the true cost of hospitality was carried by someone else, the farmer, the cook, the dishwasher, or the environment. We cannot continue that way.
At the same time, I don’t want great cooking to become something younger generations can experience only through a screen. Perhaps we have to rethink the architecture of fine dining rather than abandon its values. Maybe there are fewer courses. Maybe restaurants become smaller. Maybe there are different expressions of a chef’s work at different price points. Maybe the next great restaurant won’t look anything like what my generation called fine dining. We don’t need to protect the format. We need to protect the values: craft, knowledge, responsibility, human dignity, and hospitality. Everything else should be questioned.
What element of fine dining do you believe is timeless and what do you hope the next generation never changes about sitting down for a great meal?
Kammerer: Standards, hierarchy, discipline. I hope we can swing back to being present, and realizing how fortunate we are to sit down and have an experience created by countless dedicated individuals who have devoted their lives to this. Scroll instagram after dinner, it will still be there.
Lagasse: I think the ballet-like synchronization of servers will always be mesmerizing, whether you’re 5 or 50. Seeing servers drop or clear food in unison, or move around the dining room serving wine, it’s like this massive performance. I’ve always been drawn to that. Service styles have changed, and many restaurants are doing a fantastic job with less traditional approaches. But that old Russian style of service will never entirely disappear.
At the same time, sitting down for a meal has always been about the people around you and the conversation you have with them. If you ask people about the best meal they’ve ever had, very few will name a particular dish. Most will tell you it was their grandmother’s 60th birthday or something like that. That is human nature. I don’t think anyone will change it, but I hope nobody does.
Crenn: The table. Protect the table. Long before restaurants existed, we gathered around fire. We shared food, told stories, passed down knowledge, celebrated, mourned, fell in love, disagreed, and sometimes found our way back to one another. The table came later, but the gesture remained the same: We gather.
I want the next generation to question everything: luxury, hierarchy, price, and the rules. Question my generation. Question me. Break what needs to be broken and build something better. But don’t lose the human being. Don’t lose curiosity, generosity, or respect for the people who grow our food, or for the soil and water that make any of this possible. And don’t lose the table.
In a world where almost everything is asking for our attention, choosing to sit with another human being, share food, and truly be present may become one of the greatest luxuries we have left. Perhaps that is where the future of fine dining begins. Not with more. With meaning.
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